Hi, if reliability is key to you (as your secondary residence is far away), you should consider the E3 with my custom ecobee integration which includes some resiliency attributes not found in other thermostat integration such as disconnect protection (contrary to Nest, for security purposes, ecobee requires to refresh the auth tokens every hour which sometimes leads to disconnect issues under the ST platform, even for the ST stock ecobee device) and the “replay” logic in case of ST or ecobee outages.
The “replay” logic ensures that commands sent to the thermostat will be kept in a queue if they fail in order to “replay” them within the next hour…
This algorithm is not included in the ST ecobee device (under the marketspace) or any other custom ecobee integration.
Also, I’ve expanded the ecobee thermostat capabilities with a unique Amazon echo/Alexa integration (it can give you comfort & energy savings tips based on the indoor/outdoor conditions at your home) by executing a smartapp called ecobeeGetTips or by interacting with echo’s voice commands.
Regards.